


We're so many broken things (but not yet)

by thedisassociation



Series: We Are Not Stable Bodies (Lessons in Gravitational Collapse) [1]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Doctor Who, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 22:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1619363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedisassociation/pseuds/thedisassociation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Helena isn't the Doctor and Myka is terrified of what she could do (has done, will do) to H.G. Wells.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're so many broken things (but not yet)

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to paigemccuddles for letting me ramble in her inbox about various headcanons and ficlets from what has become a somewhat extended universe that will probably never be written or published in its entirety. This is just a drabble from said universe. Enjoy.

She’s spent her whole life running as fast as she can, both of her hearts beating quickly, pounding in her ears. People sometimes think she’s not listening to them, that her brain is too busy firing synapses and making connections faster than she can articulate, but really it’s that she can’t hear them over the sound of the blood rushing to her head. She feels loss deeply, the loss of her home, her people, her companions. They all leave in the end. Sometimes, she is the one who sends them away. Sometimes, she kills them. She is always responsible.

Helena can sense it. The Doctor doesn’t know how but sometimes Helena gives her this look, this deep, penetrating, dark look that says, “I know your secrets and I know why you hide. I  _know_.”

(They don’t know it yet but she will one day explain how she knows and it will be the one of the worst days they ever have together.)

The future is spread out before, inviting them to move towards something greater, and Helena  _knows_. And it is terrifying.

She will break Helena, same as she does the rest. The Doctor tells her as much one night, when it’s just the two of them, legs dangling out of the TARDIS into space. Helena is awestruck — she had such big dreams of space when she was a child, when the idea of being able to travel off the planet was one that no one believed would ever become a reality (and now her entire reality is the stuff of dreams). The Doctor never gets tired of making people’s dreams come true. She does get tired of the fallout, though; she gets tired of the fallout that  _she_ creates.

Helena looks at her like she’s a fool. “You’re a fool,” she says, “if you think that you will be the thing that breaks me. I have been broken before, long before I ever met you.”

“It won’t be the same,” the Doctor says honestly.

“Won’t it?”

“No.”

“Doctor,” Helena says and for a moment, the Doctor wants nothing more than to tell this woman — this time traveler, this kindred spirit, this incredible human being — her real name, her truth. “You cannot make decisions for other people, you know.”

“I do it all the time,” the Doctor’s voice is kind but firm. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Doctor will always  _try_  to protect those she cares about, going against their wishes in the interest of keeping them alive. Sometimes, they hate her for it.

“If you think I’m going to let you make my decisions, then I’m afraid you do not know me at all,” Helena says.

Helena kicks her legs out, boots swinging towards distant stars and planets, distant futures and distant pasts and distant  _everythings_  that the Doctor thinks that Helena, despite her genius, can’t possibly understand.

(She can but the Doctor won’t understand this until later, when they are trapped in a tomb somewhere in ancient Egypt and Helena breaks - but not because of the Doctor).

“Or is that the point?” Helena wonders. Her fingers skim across the back of the Doctor’s hand, brushing over her skin lightly, and her palm comes to rest atop the other woman’s hand.

It’s distracting, so incredibly distracting. Helena’s hand is warm and holds promises that the Doctor had long stopped accepting. She sucks in a breath and bites her lip absently, an old habit that has survived countless regenerations. She stares out of the TARDIS for long seconds that grow longer as she sits there, watching all of time and space pass by, waiting for her to come back. The universe is endless before them and Helena is endless beside her.

“Doctor?”

She stops running. Her legs feel like they’re burning from the inside out as she mentally forces herself to stay in this moment, this one single spectacular moment, and her hearts stop beating furiously in her ears.

“My name is Myka.” She says it slowly, like a benediction, a prayer to all of time and space that this is the right thing to do.

Helena smiles softly, grateful and honest, and squeezes Myka’s hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Myka,” she says. Myka’s name is a benediction on her lips, too, and now she could break both of them.

(And maybe she will. Some things have not yet been decided.)


End file.
